The Great Meteor of March 24, 1933: It zigged, It zagged, It changed course, it looked like a Football, Six miles in diameter

Ground personnel at Winslow, Arizona; a mail pilot south and west of Albuquerque, NM and a pilot near Amarillo, Texas along with people in Tucumcari, NM and Pueblo, CO all observed something extraordinary and bizarre on March 23, 1933 at approximately 6:00-6:30 p.m. CST.

A huge but oddly slow moving meteor was blazing through the sky. There was a tremendous explosion, then a brilliant blue glare of light with a yellowed rim around it and the after glow would remain in place, verified as to time, by multiple photographs, drawings and eyewitness testimony from at least three states.

A pilot, Frank Williams, flying south and west of Albuquerque got on his radio and reported seeing the object. He said it looked like a "football."  Ground control back in Winslow to the west chimed in with reports of also seeing the object and explosion. A pilot William Coyle reported 300 miles east of Amarillo seeing the same object and theorized the object must have entered the atmosphere somewhere in the Oklahoma panhandle or just east of there.

The object was moving, according to all reports, east to west. Reports also stated the object "changed course" and "zig-zagged" shifting from a southern trajectory to a westward one.

A week later, Ed Hart, a farmer south of Stratford, Texas, in the panhandle, found in a scorched patch of wheat a molten mass, that had been so hot it nearly cooked the wheat on the stalks. It weighed about four pounds.

H.H. Nininger, early meteor research, produced a report the next year in the journal Popular Astronomy (Vol. 42), "The Great Meteor of March 24,1933" and in the journal Meteorites and Planetary Science , "The Pasamonte, New Mexico, Meteorite" in a June-July 1936 issue of the journal.

The event was unique in so many people having utilized portable cameras to capture the event.  His research was fascinating, as much for what it had to say about meteor research of the day and how unique the object was that traversed the skies that night. His research would lead to verifying the largest center of debris in its final resting place near Wagon Mound, NM.

Research verified that people heard the explosion some 100 miles away and the fireball of the explosion was reported by witnesses 300 miles away in various directions. 

Nininger  noted that the most "puzzling feature was the "after-glow" because it was uniformly described as "bright as the sun" and visible for 30 minutes from diverse locations.

The scientist admitted going into the research with the idea that this after glow was merely the impact of a setting sun and could not be a self-luminous object.  After calculations by astronomer Prof. A.W. Recht of Denver University who plotted the location of the sun in the locations at the time of the sighting proved it could NOT have been sun reflection.

Indeed, evidence was that the lingering, glowing cloud was 200 miles long, 2 miles in diameter and remained visible for 30 minutes.  Additionally, witnesses claimed it changed course! The object was moving east to west, south to west and the zig-zagged across the sky. In addition, that cloud dispersed a fine volcanic ash like dust that had some reporting throat problems for days afterward.

Further, and most impressive, was the calculations based on the photographs and witness sightings indicated the object that exploded was some six miles in diameter.  Indeed, the large incandescent spheroid in the photo was difficult to interpret. There was a fuzziness toward the front end and theories of super heated air being pushed ahead of the leading edge were offered.

Most of the scientists settled for the idea the object, huge and high in the atmosphere when first sighted, was an asymmetrical form that calved, like an iceberg would break apart, and the diverse directions of travel might be explained by these pieces, still large and glowing, traveling onward after the breaking.

Of course, with the theme of this page, the description of the massive bright object -six miles in diameter - and shaped like a football lead down a more alternative path.

See also, Boys Life, August 1934 for Frank C. Cross' article, Stones from the Sky.

Quotes and Questions

Fact: Air Force Regulation (AFR) 200-2, along with Joint Army, Navy and Air Force Publication (JANAP) 146, made releasing information about unidentified flying objects to non-authorized persons a crime.

The Air Force permitted release of information only on cases they HAD SOLVED or COULD EXPLAIN.  One of the earliest issues under varied PBB leaders was reducing the "unidentifieds" and instead a process of labeling cases "lack of sufficient data for evaluate" and quick and easy explanations emerged.  Some so patently incorrect they are laughable on review.

Project Blue Book was, it is said, declassified in 1977 except for reports of UFO's potentially affecting national security. Those reports were allegedly made in accordance with JANAP 146 or the Air Force Manual 55-11. As such, they were not part of Project Blue Book.

Is it true?
Blue Book contains no major navy or army sightings as might be expected based on such regulations as JANAP 146 or AFR 200.2 .  Is this true?  As the military entered into a research and development phase related to first missile research and then to lunar landing projects the Army, Navy and new Air Force were given separate pieces of a vast R&D plan and given different agendas that, theoretically, were all to dovetail at some future date in a vast master plan.

Midget Helicopters in the Tiime Flying Saucers: 1948's 'Skyhook'

A miniature helicopter, dubbed "Skyhook" was created by designers John E. Duncan and W. Hewitt Baylor to carry small payloads.

It weighed 15 pounds , could carry payloads up to 10 pounds, could be carried in a suitcase and could rise to 1000 feet with its rotors.

1968: Dueling Giants

August 15 - Zenia to Yellow Springs, Oh . 4 witnesses observed the object(s) for 30 minutes.

Gold and white object, "piece of pie" shape with corners rounded off, flying tip up, plate or round, light bright enough to illuminate road and surround, It was observed directly overhead, later it moved to the east. 

The case contains comments from Dr. Donald H. Menzel pushed the moon explanation, as he pushed any and every explanation that was not one that accepted the concept of UFO's as craft from another world. He was stridently opposed to the extraterrestrial hypothesis. In later years, as if evident in these and other documents, this created a rift between Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Menzel. Hynek had a tendency to follow the science, even when the science suggested things that were a little hard to accept and recognized the need to continue to ask questions and challenge assumptions. Menzel, as he displays in his book The World of Flying Saucers, articles, and in the statements he makes in these documents, had a more narrow view that viewed science as more set in stone than open to ongoing revision as new data was found.

Menzel explained away the apparent erractic movement as "auto kinesis", dismisses as imagination witness descriptions of events, and discounts as standard practice the full statements of witnesses to make the theory fit his presumptions of the events. He chides Hynek for accepting that it was not the moon, as Menzel affirmed, simply because a witness said what they saw was not the moon "because the moon doesn't do that."  For Menzel, he did not even need to investigate because he did not believe in UFO's as craft of other worlds and thus could speak authoritatively that the witnesses had mistaken the moon for something more.

Menzel dismissed Hynek's acceptance of such witness statements : "I simply don't share Hynek's faith in the reliability of human beings." (Nob. 8, 1968, Menzel to PBB). Earlier in October he had advised PBB head Quintinella to terminate Hynek's consulting agreement. With the same tenacity that he pressed for "ball lightening" as the explanation for events in one Texas series of sightings, he was no doubt behind later explanation for the October Minot AFB events were the still ill-defined and much questioned "plasma" rationale had replaced the ball lightening of an earlier day.  The fact that plasma had been pushed by another individual of questionable intent, Phillip Klass is worth noting. Both men shared an unprecedented, and often unidentified, connection to the back room workings of Project Blue Book. Both, most probably (to use PBB terms), were working to serve the hidden agenda of the project and provide debunking as needed. The arrival of both Klass and the appearance of Menzel in the pages of the project both occur at roughly the same time that Hynek is becoming more vocal about the possibilities behind the whole UFO subject and the continued need to address with unbiased scientific inquiry the totality of the subject. The timing is very interesting.

1968 : The End but Not

Project Blue Book was winding down, swirling like water down a sink, and not fast enough for the staff and officials.The conclusions are brisk and steady with rubber stamp rapidity. The old favorites are in play: probable aircraft, astronomical objects (Sirius neck and neck with Venus), and a favorite team was eyeing the finish line: Plasma and Insufficient Data.

Oddly, June - November saw a lot of similar events being recorded and just as similarily discounted.

 June 30, 1968, New Albany, Indiana - file is 487 pages long. AF wanted to discredit the report due a single witness, witness had knowledge of the Socorro, NM sighting when he reported his egg shaped object with four red lights that formed a square. Yet, the file is packed with sightings from the area by diverse and often well qualified witnesses in recent years of things seen in the skies.
July 11- Filson AB, Alaska
July - Medford, OR
July 30, Bringhamton, NY
August 15 - Zenia to Yellow Springs, Oh . 4 witnesses. Gold and white object, "piece of pie" shape with corners rounded off, flying tip up, plate or round, light bright enough to illuminate road and surroundings. AF inisted it was the moon but witnesses dismissed that due to size and erratic motion.
August 19 - Moalsville, WVA
August 21, Robstown, TX
August - Memphis, Tenn
August 30- Hamilton, Ohio
Sept-6-7 , Charleston, Indian,
Sept 7 - Aiken, SC

In October and still notorious Minot AFB.
Nov. 17, Bridgeport, Ohio
Nov. 19, Acton, Texas
Nov. 20, Bronx, NT
Nov. 21 - Silver Bay, Minn

November 29 would also see events in Hazelwood, Missouri that Hynek found extremely interesting, and an alleged sighting of the planet Venus in Silver Bay Minnesota that has an intriguing sentence in the report.

The majority of these last sightings all bear an uncommon similarity and the only differences are due to distance from object, perspective of the object from where witness stood, and similar features.

"object is similar to others reported in Duluth area recently. This seems to be a common pattern, with sightings in areas continuing for several days." --- Project Blue Book files November 1969, Silver Bay, Minnesota.